rather than get into a definition of "conservative" I would point, for example, to anti-abortion activists. or you could think of a slate of other issues, like immigration, on which activists absolutely represented a rebellion against "old school Republicans." the point is that such activists had their policy preferences benefit at the m…
rather than get into a definition of "conservative" I would point, for example, to anti-abortion activists. or you could think of a slate of other issues, like immigration, on which activists absolutely represented a rebellion against "old school Republicans." the point is that such activists had their policy preferences benefit at the margins over time from having Republicans in office at the same time that they attempted to reshape the party via the primary process. these voters became the darlings of Republican politicians--who proved highly responsive--in a way that leftists declaring that they won't vote or will vote third party never have.
The percentage of college educated whites that vote for the GOP has been in decline since Eisenhower, from what I understand. Trump is probably the first Republican since Ike to lose that demographic. He is the culmination of a demographic shift that took 50 or more years.
We're talking about different things here. I consider demographics to be decisive and politics to be illusory.
Okay. I agree that we're talking about different things. The argument was made that people who consistently vote for Democrats in general elections will never get what they want. I disagree, and think the leverage point is in primary elections. They could be deluded, but I've talked to more Republican politicians than I can count, and they absolutely reposition themselves to try to attract "base" voters in the primary. They do not concern themselves with people who pledge not to vote for them in general elections (why would they). Maybe they're delusional, but I think you can see this play out practically pretty clearly. Anyway, that's what I was responding to, and stand by my argument. I think you're talking about something different and I'm not sure I have any strong opinion. Structural factors are a big deal, sure. But this whole conversation is about the instrumental effectiveness of voting choices. Close election results obviously make a material impact on things at the margins, so it's a question of interest even if you believe all politics to be an illusion.
I am responding to the "A vote for Clinton is a vote for Trump" argument. I think that by definition voting for the weaker candidate in a primary obviously benefits the opposition in the general election and if the polling indicated a better matchup for Sanders then Clinton was indeed the weaker candidate.
Why was she the weaker candidate? Because working class voters, who had previously made Obama their champion, were defecting to the GOP.
Choosing a lousy or out of touch primary candidate is a criticism commonly leveled by D's against R's. How does that not hold for both parties?
I just strongly disagree with anyone's ability to prognosticate who the weaker candidate will wind up being with any kind of accuracy, whereas it's very easy to figure out that it's about as close to you can get to 100 percent chance that the winner of the general election in 2016 would be the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate. "Electability" is itself contested and there is simply no way to settle the question empirically one way or the other. Hillary also very nearly won! Who knows.
You could come up with qualitative and quantitative reasons that Bradley would have been a better candidate than Gore. Bradley's campaign absolutely did so at the time, at length! But we just don't know!
"I just strongly disagree with anyone's ability to prognosticate who the weaker candidate will wind up being with any kind of accuracy,"
How does this not apply equally as well to Clinton as Sanders? What criteria was used in that case to select Clinton? It obviously wasn't the polling. Was it just feels?
I assume it was simply preference? But to be 100% clear, I think someone saying "you should vote for Clinton because obviously she will win and Sanders will lose" is dumb. I think the reverse is also dumb. I am consistent on this point.
I also strongly believe, if we're getting into counterfactuals, that is Sanders had won the primary and lost the general--certainly possible--people like Jon Chait would have blamed people or voting for the less electable candidate in the primary. That would have been dumb. And I'd bet Chait woulda said "Hillary would have won."
(The polls were muddled, fwiw, and Clinton was the most well known politician in the country whereas Sanders had not been attacked by the GOP at all at that point. Snap polls a year out from an election have zero predictive value according to all research I've read on the subject, so I think it would be dumb for primary voters to vote based on snap polls. But that's neither here nor there.)
To return to your question--do you think maybe most voters just vote for the candidate they like better for whatever complex of reasons and that the electability argument -- which can never really be proven one way or the other -- is just some after-the-fact justification for their preferences? That's kinda what I think! Surely you agree that at least some voters aren't even bothering to try this calculation and are just voting for the person they like? Most Sanders supporters surely fell into this camp!
To bring this around to what DeBoer wrote, if you vote for the weaker candidate in the primary (Clinton) how is that not going to result in an advantage for the opponent (Trump) in the general?
I am not speculating about the motives of voters. I am merely responding to the "electability" argument that is being deployed against DeBoer wrote. Yes, obviously voting for a weak primary candidate means putting yourself at a disadvantage for the general. How is that not completely obvious?
Because we do not know who "the weaker candidate" was, and indeed probably most primary voters believed that Hillary was the stronger candidate, and had their own arguments, based on a slate of evidence no more or less convincing than yours.
Maybe they backed the wrong horse (or maybe not), but that's different in kind to the analogy that DeBoer was drawing with a GENERAL ELECTION. In that scenario we could say with near 100% certainty that in 2020, for example, the winner would be either Biden or Trump. Or in 2016, either Hillary or Trump
He wasn't responding to an "electability" argument about Sanders--THAT would be a dumb argument, I agree--he was responding to an argument (same one made by Chomsky) in favor of voting for Biden (or Hillary) IN A GENERAL ELECTION because if the Dem did not win, Trump would.
A while ago there was a survey that reported that roughly a third of Republican voters had no great loyalty to the GOP and were in it solely for Trump.
Go back and read what DeBoer wrote. He specifically points out that somebody who may have voted for Sanders in the primary would have little loyalty to the D's and could easily defect to Stein for the general. In addition to what I wrote that's another argument in favor of the view that Clinton was the weaker candidate. Why would a MAGA type vote for Romney?
According to your preferred metric, Rubio was vastly stronger than Trump, so what do MAGA voters do then. And now that I look, the difference in polling between Hillary and Bernie was too small to act on even if you believed it was predictive, which I don't.
There are lots of arguments for why someone might decide Bernie was a stronger candidate at the time and lots of arguments why someone might decide Hillary was a stronger candidate at the time. You seem to be mostly interested in convincing me that Bernie was the stronger. I honestly think it's just impossible to say but I personally like Bernie a lot more so let's just go with it, let's say you convince me or convinced me at the time. The problem is that my credence would be like, I dunno, 55-45? Just not enough to act on. And it is PERFECTLY REASONABLE for other voters to come to a different conclusion or not use this "electability" frame at all.
I think the electability frame is a bullshit argument argument in the primary, full stop. The overwhelming majority of Sanders voters voted for Hillary in the primary and Stein had no impact on the final result, so I simply don't see what any of that has to do with anything.
I fear I'm repeating myself and we're talking past each other. You seem very invested in the idea that it was crystal clear Sanders woulda won, Dem voters shoulda known that and voted for Sanders for that reason, and their failure to do so means they are to blame for Trump's election and it would be hypocritical (for reasons I don't understand) to argue that voting instrumentally for an imperfect Dem in a general election is the best way to keep the Republican out of power (indisputably true even if people don't choose to do so for reasons of conscience, very longterm political strategy, objection to party system, hopes to get 5% threshold, or strategic hopes of exerting leverage against the D party).
There is no hypocrisy, so the argument is weak, even if I broadly agree with the thrust of what Freddie is saying. It would still be weak EVEN IF you could marshall evidence that it was entirely predictable that Sanders would win while Hilary would lose (or that the delta between the two possibilities was large and clear), which I do not think you've done.
Again: I don't think voters really vote in primary elections based on shaky, fluky hypothetical H2H national polls, and I think it would be foolish if they did.
But if that's your preference, and you have confidence in your ability to bolster that prediction by predictions about qualitative factors like world-historical trends or predictions of what a given primary voter will do (be careful on the latter...note that Hillary voters absolutely--and foolishly IMO--threatened to sit out if Sanders won, as they had with Obama) -- then, you know, that's not what I would advise, but it's your vote!
On the never Trump side it's often argued that letting voters decide the nominees, and campaign finance that made small donations more important, have been the ruin of the Grand Old Party. But both those things exist on the Dem side of the fence as well, and if they haven't reshaped the party yet it suggests that something more is needed.
I like the idea above that actually *asking voters what they want* could be the secret sauce. And it looks to me as if that is the left's weakest spot.
rather than get into a definition of "conservative" I would point, for example, to anti-abortion activists. or you could think of a slate of other issues, like immigration, on which activists absolutely represented a rebellion against "old school Republicans." the point is that such activists had their policy preferences benefit at the margins over time from having Republicans in office at the same time that they attempted to reshape the party via the primary process. these voters became the darlings of Republican politicians--who proved highly responsive--in a way that leftists declaring that they won't vote or will vote third party never have.
The percentage of college educated whites that vote for the GOP has been in decline since Eisenhower, from what I understand. Trump is probably the first Republican since Ike to lose that demographic. He is the culmination of a demographic shift that took 50 or more years.
We're talking about different things here. I consider demographics to be decisive and politics to be illusory.
Okay. I agree that we're talking about different things. The argument was made that people who consistently vote for Democrats in general elections will never get what they want. I disagree, and think the leverage point is in primary elections. They could be deluded, but I've talked to more Republican politicians than I can count, and they absolutely reposition themselves to try to attract "base" voters in the primary. They do not concern themselves with people who pledge not to vote for them in general elections (why would they). Maybe they're delusional, but I think you can see this play out practically pretty clearly. Anyway, that's what I was responding to, and stand by my argument. I think you're talking about something different and I'm not sure I have any strong opinion. Structural factors are a big deal, sure. But this whole conversation is about the instrumental effectiveness of voting choices. Close election results obviously make a material impact on things at the margins, so it's a question of interest even if you believe all politics to be an illusion.
I am responding to the "A vote for Clinton is a vote for Trump" argument. I think that by definition voting for the weaker candidate in a primary obviously benefits the opposition in the general election and if the polling indicated a better matchup for Sanders then Clinton was indeed the weaker candidate.
Why was she the weaker candidate? Because working class voters, who had previously made Obama their champion, were defecting to the GOP.
Choosing a lousy or out of touch primary candidate is a criticism commonly leveled by D's against R's. How does that not hold for both parties?
I just strongly disagree with anyone's ability to prognosticate who the weaker candidate will wind up being with any kind of accuracy, whereas it's very easy to figure out that it's about as close to you can get to 100 percent chance that the winner of the general election in 2016 would be the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate. "Electability" is itself contested and there is simply no way to settle the question empirically one way or the other. Hillary also very nearly won! Who knows.
You could come up with qualitative and quantitative reasons that Bradley would have been a better candidate than Gore. Bradley's campaign absolutely did so at the time, at length! But we just don't know!
"I just strongly disagree with anyone's ability to prognosticate who the weaker candidate will wind up being with any kind of accuracy,"
How does this not apply equally as well to Clinton as Sanders? What criteria was used in that case to select Clinton? It obviously wasn't the polling. Was it just feels?
I assume it was simply preference? But to be 100% clear, I think someone saying "you should vote for Clinton because obviously she will win and Sanders will lose" is dumb. I think the reverse is also dumb. I am consistent on this point.
I also strongly believe, if we're getting into counterfactuals, that is Sanders had won the primary and lost the general--certainly possible--people like Jon Chait would have blamed people or voting for the less electable candidate in the primary. That would have been dumb. And I'd bet Chait woulda said "Hillary would have won."
(The polls were muddled, fwiw, and Clinton was the most well known politician in the country whereas Sanders had not been attacked by the GOP at all at that point. Snap polls a year out from an election have zero predictive value according to all research I've read on the subject, so I think it would be dumb for primary voters to vote based on snap polls. But that's neither here nor there.)
To return to your question--do you think maybe most voters just vote for the candidate they like better for whatever complex of reasons and that the electability argument -- which can never really be proven one way or the other -- is just some after-the-fact justification for their preferences? That's kinda what I think! Surely you agree that at least some voters aren't even bothering to try this calculation and are just voting for the person they like? Most Sanders supporters surely fell into this camp!
To bring this around to what DeBoer wrote, if you vote for the weaker candidate in the primary (Clinton) how is that not going to result in an advantage for the opponent (Trump) in the general?
I am not speculating about the motives of voters. I am merely responding to the "electability" argument that is being deployed against DeBoer wrote. Yes, obviously voting for a weak primary candidate means putting yourself at a disadvantage for the general. How is that not completely obvious?
Because we do not know who "the weaker candidate" was, and indeed probably most primary voters believed that Hillary was the stronger candidate, and had their own arguments, based on a slate of evidence no more or less convincing than yours.
Maybe they backed the wrong horse (or maybe not), but that's different in kind to the analogy that DeBoer was drawing with a GENERAL ELECTION. In that scenario we could say with near 100% certainty that in 2020, for example, the winner would be either Biden or Trump. Or in 2016, either Hillary or Trump
He wasn't responding to an "electability" argument about Sanders--THAT would be a dumb argument, I agree--he was responding to an argument (same one made by Chomsky) in favor of voting for Biden (or Hillary) IN A GENERAL ELECTION because if the Dem did not win, Trump would.
A while ago there was a survey that reported that roughly a third of Republican voters had no great loyalty to the GOP and were in it solely for Trump.
Go back and read what DeBoer wrote. He specifically points out that somebody who may have voted for Sanders in the primary would have little loyalty to the D's and could easily defect to Stein for the general. In addition to what I wrote that's another argument in favor of the view that Clinton was the weaker candidate. Why would a MAGA type vote for Romney?
According to your preferred metric, Rubio was vastly stronger than Trump, so what do MAGA voters do then. And now that I look, the difference in polling between Hillary and Bernie was too small to act on even if you believed it was predictive, which I don't.
There are lots of arguments for why someone might decide Bernie was a stronger candidate at the time and lots of arguments why someone might decide Hillary was a stronger candidate at the time. You seem to be mostly interested in convincing me that Bernie was the stronger. I honestly think it's just impossible to say but I personally like Bernie a lot more so let's just go with it, let's say you convince me or convinced me at the time. The problem is that my credence would be like, I dunno, 55-45? Just not enough to act on. And it is PERFECTLY REASONABLE for other voters to come to a different conclusion or not use this "electability" frame at all.
I think the electability frame is a bullshit argument argument in the primary, full stop. The overwhelming majority of Sanders voters voted for Hillary in the primary and Stein had no impact on the final result, so I simply don't see what any of that has to do with anything.
I fear I'm repeating myself and we're talking past each other. You seem very invested in the idea that it was crystal clear Sanders woulda won, Dem voters shoulda known that and voted for Sanders for that reason, and their failure to do so means they are to blame for Trump's election and it would be hypocritical (for reasons I don't understand) to argue that voting instrumentally for an imperfect Dem in a general election is the best way to keep the Republican out of power (indisputably true even if people don't choose to do so for reasons of conscience, very longterm political strategy, objection to party system, hopes to get 5% threshold, or strategic hopes of exerting leverage against the D party).
There is no hypocrisy, so the argument is weak, even if I broadly agree with the thrust of what Freddie is saying. It would still be weak EVEN IF you could marshall evidence that it was entirely predictable that Sanders would win while Hilary would lose (or that the delta between the two possibilities was large and clear), which I do not think you've done.
Again: I don't think voters really vote in primary elections based on shaky, fluky hypothetical H2H national polls, and I think it would be foolish if they did.
But if that's your preference, and you have confidence in your ability to bolster that prediction by predictions about qualitative factors like world-historical trends or predictions of what a given primary voter will do (be careful on the latter...note that Hillary voters absolutely--and foolishly IMO--threatened to sit out if Sanders won, as they had with Obama) -- then, you know, that's not what I would advise, but it's your vote!
On the never Trump side it's often argued that letting voters decide the nominees, and campaign finance that made small donations more important, have been the ruin of the Grand Old Party. But both those things exist on the Dem side of the fence as well, and if they haven't reshaped the party yet it suggests that something more is needed.
I like the idea above that actually *asking voters what they want* could be the secret sauce. And it looks to me as if that is the left's weakest spot.